184/.] The rock temples of Dambool, Ceylon. 34!) 



contain, as to excite little but contempt for them after having seen the 

 great one. They may be taken as emblematic of the power of the 

 various monarch? who formed them, and of the state of Ceylon at the 

 period of their excavation — the second formed about 100 B. C. infinitely 

 superior to the third, which was excavated in the twelfth century 

 after our era ; the third surpassing the fourth, which was constructed in 

 1750, and the fourth surpassing the fifth, which is still more recent. 

 I shall therefore content myself with mentioning their contents, leaving 

 the rest to your imagination. 



The third is styled the passpilame or western wihare, and contains in 

 addition to fifty images of Buddha of all sizes, a statue of Kirti Sree 

 Rajah, who reigned about the middle of the last century — the last 

 Ceylonese sovereign by whose exertions the caves of Dambool were 

 embellished or enlarged. Although there is a greater number of 

 figures in this cave than in any other, yet from its small size in com- 

 parison with the second, they do not produce any remarkable effect. 

 The passpilame wihare is seventy-eight feet long, and varies in breadth 

 from thirty to sixty feet. The fourth and fifth caves are called the 

 altith or new wihares, in reference to their age, being, as I have before 

 remarked, much more recent than any of the others. The fourth was 

 constructed by the monarch last named, Kirti Sree ; the fifth by a 

 Kandian noble in the latter part of the last century. The first of these 

 is forty-two feet long by thirty broad, and projects about fifteen feet in 

 front of those formerly mentioned ; it contains ten images of Buddha. 

 The last is also about forty feet long by twenty broad, and contains 

 a gigantic image of Buddha in the reclining posture, nearly twelve yards 

 long. Besides this there are in the same cave eleven other statues of 

 smaller dimensions. 



.Such are the five cave-temples of Dambool, lasting monuments of 

 mistaken zeal and wasted labour — evidences of the religious devotion 

 of those who excavated them, and evidences also of the implicit reliance 

 once placed by the natives of Ceylon in the faith of the prophet of 

 Maghada ; but that faith is now on the wane— nay, its light is nearly 

 extinguished, and but a solitary pilgrim or a prying antiquarian is 

 now found to resort to those temples where thousands formerly wor- 

 shipped and where kings once prostrated themselves. 



It may not be out of place if I add to these notes that about twelve 



3 A 



